It’s dark. I am panting. However, I know I shouldn’t. Panting is for dogs. And the walking dead. Shadows conceal us, but they can never be trusted. If rays of moonshine from behind a cloud or the light of a motion sensor intervene, the darkness will abandon you. What is worse out here amongst the dark and the eyes: the enemy you can trust, or the friend you cannot?
For now we are okay. Our enemies forget what it is like to be small and young. They don’t check for us everywhere; they don’t think we can hide behind the air conditioner. The longer we hide, though, the more powerful they become, and the more likely I will die, or worse, become one of them. Finally, an opportunity arises. The plan is risky, but the gamble is a calculated bet with a splash of divine intervention that loads the dice. This is the plan of legends, the type that turns peasants into heroes, heroes into legends, and makes the heavens envy man, if only for a brief moment. In a few minutes, our fate will be decided. As people shout names of our friends, we will soon be amongst the dead or will stand proudly on base, the winner of another night’s game of olly olly oxen free.
Hiding games like “hide-and-go-seek” and “olly olly oxen free” are perfect for children.[1] First, children are small, agile, and as a result of being mostly cartilage and having more bones than adults, they can hide and contort themselves into seemingly impossible shapes. Most kids like to hide, too. Perhaps hiding’s appeal stems from a vestigial instinct from our primitive ancestors (e.g. little prehistoric kids’ adaptation for hiding from saber-toothed cats and other carnivorous organisms), but regardless, this trait makes kids kickass hiders. The beauty of hiding games is their sheer simplicity. First, hiding games can be played everywhere.[2]Also, to paraphrase a great scholar, hiding games are “cheap as free.” Even Milton Bradley won’t attempt to box and market it; there is nothing to buy. The poor and the rich are true equals in the realm of hiding games. However, the trait that defines hiding games as the ultimate childhood activity is this: Everyone has at least one glory story. For some, this is a tale of how they hid in a pile of leaves for an hour, or how they scaled a roof to dangerously reach a goal their parents would not have approved of if there was adult supervision. There are as many ways to win as there are kids. For one glorious game in our youths, we were the kings and queens of hide-and-go-seek. Each child has his own story.
Not to brag, but my tale of glory rivals the ingenuity of that kid from The Shining,[3] though my story involves significantly fewer bleeding elevators. Let me set the scene. The location is a small suburban town during a summer night in 1991 or 1992. The only reason that I can be specific with the year is because the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles happened to be at the height of their popularity, and in response, I was wearing a black T-shirt with a neon Ninja Turtles screen print. That night, like many warm, not-so-late summer nights (my bedtime was well before 10:30 back then), the neighborhood boys all met up to play a hiding game called olly olly oxen free. We usually went to one particular neighbor kid’s house up the street for one reason only: He had the best backyard — dark, lots of trees and bushes, and connected with several other people’s backyards. My house was not an option, since our family had an unscalable six-foot-high wooden fence surrounding the perimeter of our backyard, a small Great Wall of Minnesota if you will. Good for protecting our home from invading Mongols, but bad for olly olly oxen free.
Before each night began, we always met to discuss the rules. In retrospect, these discussions were pointless. As kids, rules added an official feel to each game. This wasn’t simply a game of pretend; this was an intense competition. In a similar vein as those pregame meetings, I will describe the basic rules of that night’s game as a refresher for those of you who haven’t been a kid for a while, and because of the many existing regional variants[4] of olly olly oxen free.
As usual, there are two sides, the hiders and seekers. The seekers range from two to four people; the remaining kids, hide. The object of the game varies depending which side you are on. If you are a seeker, find the hiders and tag them; if you are a hider, get to “base.” Base, much like obtaining the Triforce in the video game Legend of Zelda, is the only way to truly win the game. But unlike the Legend of Zelda, base was not nearly as magical as a floating golden triangle; rather, it usually was something like a pole or a car. Oh, and of course, though this rule is a given, seekers could not “guard base.”[5]
The rules were straightforward that night, too. The host of the game decided his deck would be base. I preferred the tree; its 360-degree radial symmetry afforded easy access to victory from any angle. The deck base was more cumbersome to reach. A hider had to take a single set of stairs located in a conspicuous location, or climb over railings; either way I knew I could make do. The rules were like every other night’s rules, with one exception. To remove a hider from play, a seeker only needed to see you and shout your name.
This last-minute rules modification posed a serious handicap for me and the hiders. No longer could I rely simply on my ability to dart between bushes and nimbly leap over chain-link fences to escape my predators, as in games past. Achieving victory would require much more. There was no objection to the new rule, though; we just wanted to play. We divided into hiders and seekers. I was a hider. The seekers closed their eyes and dreaded countdown began. We fled.
The hiders left in a group. This pack mentality is how the first seconds of our games always started out. This group mentality is an effective strategy for prey animals like zebras and sardines. However, children are devils. They are not loyal like our animal brethren. Besides, packs mentality may work well in the Serengeti, but we were a different type of prey. We continued to run. None of us were counting, but we knew with each footstep we took, both sides were a few more counts closer to the beginning of the hunt.
We reached the opposite side of a house, and quickly, bodies began creeping into various hiding places. Some moved toward the coverage of dense foliage, wedging themselves within the branches and leaves, others to the shadows. However, not every bond was broken. Partnerships hold potential. In this case, a boy, whose house was in front of the water tower, and I team up. We move toward those veiled open spaces. A hider must constantly debate between visibility and flexibility. Hiding in bushes, under cars, or in old boats provides the best cover, but at the price of mobility. The consequences of discovery are high in those places, capture is inevitable. However, while detection is easier for those hiding in the shadows of trees and houses, escape for the hider is easier as well. Since we were both the same age, size, and speed, we preferred the shadows. Unlike the others, we could always rely on our speed to save us.
But perhaps, not in today’s game. In traditional olly olly oxen free, we could use our combined agility and tactics to outwit an indecisive seeker. More often than not, the person with too many choices will choose none at all. We sat silently. And we heard the names. I, for the life of me, can’t remember those names, but I remember the cringe, the little drops of cold sweat on my brow. Each name heard was a lost comrade, a fellow lost to the voice of the seekers, tagged out by sound. We waited. The two of us were young, but too mature to act hastily. We knew we couldn’t hide forever, though. Even if we could, we both wanted to get to the base. A stalemate was the true mark of a kid who never lived.
Another minute went by. From the beginning, I knew I was at a disadvantage that night for one reason: Ninja Turtles. While I believed that the faces of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael enhanced my strength and agility,[6] none of these provided the camouflage I desired. If exposed, my neon-print Ninja Turtles shirt would make me instantly recognizable. We sat pondering. The stars came out, but the sky became darker and darker. I refused to believe Ninja Turtles could ever betray me. They always won. They were ninjas and the good guys, after all. If countless episodes of their cartoon taught me anything, it was that pizza was king, “cowabunga” was the greatest catchphrase ever, and you could wear bright-colored bandanas and have shells equivalently as bulky canoeing backpacks and still be the stealthiest ninjas the world has never known.
I cannot recall exactly when, but at some moment of heavenly inspiration, I channeled the fictional cosmic energy of either Donatello, Raphael, or a combination of the two. Perhaps they could help me win. Donatello was indeed the smartest ninja turtle. He was a strategist. While the others would try to beat the enemy with force, he usually devised a plan to outwit the enemy, (typically with machines[7]). Raphael was cool and rude, but also a straight shooter. When he wanted to go out on the streets in the 1990 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he didn’t get intimidated by the fact that he was a giant green mutant in a half-shell. He put on a trench coat and went incognito. The power of Leonardo or the groovy moves of Michelangelo wouldn’t win this game. A Raph and Donny mindset could, though.
Still entrenched in shadows with my mentors in mind, I discovered the ultimate strategy: I would become someone else. Speed and anonymity were the ultimate defense. If they didn’t know my name, my opponents’ weapons were useless. However, I couldn’t be a stranger. I needed to be someone they knew. At this point, I realized the great temporary sacrifice necessary to win, but I believed (and still do to this day) that my Japanese reptilian guides understood. I took off my shirt and told the boy to give me his.[8] Like Raph becoming your average Noir-looking detective in 1990s New York, my friend would be my disguise and his disguise would be me.
Next, we crept from the darkness. While we were fast, we could still be caught by the quick, older boys. With the logic of Donny, we decided to stalk the seekers. Finding them was easy, but staying hidden took skill. We had disguises, but we couldn’t reveal ourselves too quickly. Instead we found a point at which we were far enough away so they could see our shirts, but not our faces.
We planted ourselves in position. I stood out in the open with my back to them. My friend hid. The plan wouldn’t work if we were together. If they saw both of us and shouted both our names, the disguises wouldn’t matter; it was vital that only one person was spotted. Soon the seekers came. And soon they saw me. I sprinted and they chased while shouting a name.
“John!”
Their words were not my name.
“John, John, John.”
They kept shouting that name over and over and over. As I ran, my friends slipped behind them a reached the base.
“John!”
The seekers, in their hubris, kept chasing me. Perhaps, they wanted to catch me, tackle me, and hold me down until I confessed to cheating.
“John!”
I ran though. The loophole would soon be exposed. I ran past an oak tree, between a white truck and a basketball hoop.
“John!”
Then down a grassy hill alley. I wouldn’t stop to reveal the genius of my reversal, my great doppelganger foil.
“John!”
Finally, I ducked around the corner of the house. The deck was in sight. And no one was around except for a few of the captured, and my friend. As I stepped onto the varnished wooden steps of victory, I was greeted by four other familiar neon-printed faces. From that day on, I knew at least two things to be true, in my heart: This would go down as the greatest game of olly olly oxen free ever, and what I always suspiciously knew was confirmed true — Ninja Turtles could do anything.
[1] Perhaps barring those with physical impairments, though I won’t put anything past them; they often have mad skills.
[2] Except perhaps the vacuum of space, but with no air there, kids would have more to worry about than lack of places to hide.
[3] Spoiler Alert: The little boy in “The Shining” finally escapes a crazy (more so than usual), ax- wielding Jack Nicholson by walking backwards in his own snowy footprints and then hiding. Jack follows his tracks only to find that they just stop, and the kid is nowhere in sight. The kid escapes while Jack gets confused and goes crazier; Jack freezes to death in his madness.
[4] While I have not written a thesis on the evolution and regional diversification of hiding games throughout the continental United States, I encourage someone to do so. That would make for one hell of Ph.D. defense.
[5] Duh.
[6] Just like racing stripes make any car faster.
[7] As the theme song says, “Donatello does machines.”
[8] Of course his shirt was 50 times less cool than my Ninja Turtles shirt since his shirt was not a Ninja Turtles shirt.
Turtle power!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how to read. Stop patronizing me with your fancy essays.
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